The basic issue in Iraq is that there has yet to be a political agreement between the contesting political elites. If that agreement were to occur, you would have to construct institutions and processes based on it.

But before you can have agreement between elites, you have to find out who the elites are, and that process has yet to be completed. So there's a three-step process that has yet to be fully engaged, and it will be a considerable period of time before it can be completed.

Yet the timetable for transition has already been declared: there will be transfer of sovereignty at the end of June and an election by the end of the year or early next year.

The task of selecting the elites, getting the agreement between them and getting the institutions pursuant to those agreements up and functioning - including the electoral-related ones - is enormously challenging and unlikely to be met.

The danger is that the outside parties involved, and most importantly the occupying powers - the US and the UK - are going to tire of nurturing that process. But those on the inside, the Iraqis themselves, are going to be extremely hard pressed to move any faster than they can, given the importance of the subject to them and the need for extensive interactions and discussions.

The outsiders want the process to move quickly but the insiders - knowing that this will determine the future of their country and indeed whether or not there is going to be a country - will want to make sure at every step of the way that it's exactly right.

Squaring that circle is going to be difficult, but we do have models in front of us of how these circles are squared. The Sudanese agreement, in which the UK government has played a vital role, is one such example. Many of the key decisions in that case have been postponed by as many as seven years.

It seems to me that this sort of approach, where many of the important questions are pushed down the track, is one that could offer a way out of this dilemma of the two sides - the Iraqis and the non-Iraqis - having different timetables.

Everyone would like this process to move smoothly. The outsiders' concern is that there must be a government with sufficient sovereignty and legitimacy to reach international agreement. That's absolutely vital because the economy cannot be rebuilt in the absence of the legitimacy of a governmental signatory.

However, (the US and UK) want to ensure that the signatory power will behave more or less in line with what they wanted in the first place - that the sovereign authority will agree to the continuation of coalition troops to maintain order; agree to participate in the world oil industry in a normal fashion; and, at a minimum, not be of a profoundly anti-western nature in composition, outlook or behaviour. Interview by George Wright